Jerry Brown Counters the Mischief
California Attorney General Jerry Brown has joined a coalition of environmental groups in suing the federal government over the Bush Administration’s last-gasp regulations designed to blunt the safeguards of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, a major major part of the Bush “midnight mischief” rewrite of federal environmental rules. The new regs would open up long-protected wilderness areas, public forests and vital wildlife habitats to development, mining, drilling and private exploitation.
“The Bush Administration is seeking to gut the Endangered Species Act on its way out the door,” Brown said in a statement released by his office. “This is an audacious attempt to circumvent a time-tested statute that for 35 years has required scientific review of proposed federal agency decisions that affect wildlife.” Brown’s suit argues that the new rules violate the law they are supposed to implement, and so must be struck down.
President Bush has long resisted obeying the the Endangered Species Act, an eight-year history of lawbreaking I examine in my upcoming book, Eco Barons. Among the effects of the new regulations challenged by Brown’s suit: Ending a requirement that federal wildlife scientists be consulted before approving a project that could harm endangered species; and removing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change from consideration as a cause of extinction.
The Bush rules, in effect, reject a scientific consensus that climate change is one of, if not the, leading cause of a growing epidemic of extinctions worldwide.
The Center for Biological Diversity, one of several environmental groups to file similar suits earlier this month, has expressed hope that the Obama Administration would foil the Bush Administration by mounting no defense of the suits, and instead agreeing that the new regulations were illegal.
Tags: California climate change, Eco Barons, Edward Humes, Jerry Brown, Midnight Rules
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